The German churches’ resistance to Hitler was amazingly meager. They were exclusively concerned with individualistic personal faith, traditional submission to the state, and a conservative outlook that rejected all left-wing proposals for social and political reform and enabled them to accept the Nazis’ claim to be the only alternative to Communism.
Pius XI drafted the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (“With Deep Anxiety”). It was the first major church document to criticize Nazism. Smuggled into Germany, it was read on Palm Sunday from every Catholic pulpit—before a single copy had fallen into Nazi hands. As Richard Pierard explains, the encyclical protested the oppression of the church and called on Catholics to resist the idolatrous cult of race and state, to stand against the perversion of Christian doctrines and morality, and to maintain their loyalty to Christ, his church, and Rome. Hitler reacted furiously at first, but then decided to avoid a break with Rome by treating the encyclical with silence. Knowing that he had the support of the German Catholic laypeople, Hitler simply stepped up the pressure on the churches to eliminate the possibility of organized resistance.
Reklam
Harassed by the Gestapo and repudiated by most Protestant leaders, the Confessing Church led a perilous existence. In 1935 no fewer than seven hundred Confessing Church pastors were arrested. The movement’s presence was an embarrassment to the Nazis, and its witness to Christ’s lordship over the world implicitly challenged Hitler’s totalitarianism.
When it was obvious that Hitler’s friend Ludwig Müller had failed to unite the Protestant churches, the Führer turned more and more to his anti-Christian Nazis, who claimed that Nazism represented the true fulfillment of Christianity. In 1935 the Nazis created their own Ministry of Church Affairs under a Nazi lawyer, Hanns Kerrl. When Kerrl met resistance from churchmen, he declared, “National Socialism is the doing of God’s will. God’s will reveals itself in German blood. True Christianity is represented by the party.”
Sweeping aside English institutions and ignoring the mood of the English people, James made it plain that he meant to be an absolute monarch. In 1611 he dissolved Parliament and for the next ten years ruled England without it. Thus the leaders of the Puritans and the advocates of parliamentary authority in England tended to merge in their resistance to royal power.
When the pope countered Henry’s move by excommunicating him, Henry realized that papal authority in England had to be overthrown. The king knew the antipapal sympathies in England were running high. At Cambridge, for example, certain instructors were so taken with Luther that the favorite gathering place, the Inn of the White Horse, was called Little Germany. So the king calculated that he would face little popular opposition so long as he renounced papal authority in England and avoided troublesome doctrinal questions.
Henry moved briskly on a series of fronts. He discovered an old fourteenth-century law prohibiting dealings with foreign powers and used it to insist that the English clergy stop their dealings with the pope. The clergy offered surprisingly little resistance.
A year later, in 1534, the Act of Supremacy declared, “The king’s majesty justly and rightly is and ought to be and shall be reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia .”
At the end of March 455, Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, set sail with a hundred ships manned by Carthaginian sailors. His army landed north of the Tiber, creating panic in Rome. Rumors swirled about that Gaiseric intended to burn the city. Many tried to flee. The imperial troops mutinied. While attempting to escape, Emperor Maximus was slain by one of his own bodyguards. His body was dragged through the streets, torn to pieces, and thrown in the river. No general took over the defense; the troops were disorganized. On June 2, 455, the Vandals entered Rome, meeting no resistance.
Reklam
Reklam